Talk:2861: X Value

What is wrong with comic 899? I can access other pages, but 899 gives error. SDSpivey (talk) 16:50, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

transcript and short explanation added someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 18:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there an easter egg here? Is 4.1083 a significant constant in some field? 172.71.154.91 19:00, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Dunno...but when I Googled it, it came up with a picture of a motorcycle I used to own - same vintage, same colour, same non-original aftermarket panniers - which was a little strange. Anybody else return any results centred around long-since-departed vehicles?

Or not? Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 19:31, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Googling for it showed me... a picture of this very xkcd. It's recursive? Ralfoide (talk) 20:46, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Nothing interesting on Wolfram Alpha either https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=4.1083 Ruffy314 (talk) 16:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I noted a proximity of "4.108(3)" to "42" and wondered if there was a connection ("how close can I get to 'the answer' without getting hammered for plagiarism or infringement?"). The comment below suggesting a link to the November 2023 "value" (= market capitalization) of X/Twitter is brilliant, but given that the market cap figure seems to have been posted on the day this comic was released, plus the evidence from comic 899, "coincidence" is probably the best explanation.162.158.186.118 18:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

https://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/mathemuffel-erleichtert-wert-von-x-ein.html 172.68.110.148 20:42, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

This is in german, could you maybe give a translation at least? someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 20:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Basically the same joke, x being set to 5 in this case. The website is a satirical online newspaper. --Coconut Galaxy (talk) 06:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The "narrowing down" of n might be a reference to a combinatorics problem Ron Graham was solving, managing to narrow down the dimensions of the hypercube with a certain property to be more than 6 and less than... Well, Graham's Number. 172.71.122.209 22:12, 29 November 2023 (UTC)jamieth

Even that is accomplishment. Really, narrowing number down from infinite set to finite one is the biggest narrowing you can do. -- Hkmaly (talk) 23:29, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

"In string theory the number of flux vacua is commonly thought to be roughly 10^500,[4] but could be 10^272,000[5] or higher." -- String theory landscape#Compactified Calabi–Yau manifolds Abclop99 (talk) 22:23, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

As of today, the value of Twitter (which some may call X for unknown reasons) is of 41.09 Billion USD. This might be the joke? 162.158.129.16 22:50, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The variable 'n' is often used in computer programs to be a counter for some activity that is repeated 'n' times. 'n' may be user input or it might be a calculated value like the number of items in a list. So the code would be something like, for the integer 'i' starting at 1 and iterating up to 'n' number of times in whatever computer language is being used. In this case, 'n' would be limited to the maximum value of the specific integer type in that computer language on that machine. Rtanenbaum (talk) 03:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

A result that the math community has been waiting for for a long long time! 172.71.103.135 08:16, 30 November 2023 (UTC)